


The Great Sham

by devilsnowcandy



Category: Journey into Mystery, Thor (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Child Abuse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Loki, M/M, Pseudo-Incest, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2012-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilsnowcandy/pseuds/devilsnowcandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Thor's death while battling the Serpent, a new God of Thunder appeared.  The spell that replaced Thor with Tanarus in the hearts and memories of everyone was seen through by no one - not even Loki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the time in the Thor comics when Tanarus (aka Ulik) was pretending to be Thor. In the comics, Loki knows right away that something's up - this fic explores an idea from an anonymous kinkmeme prompt in which Loki didn't know right away and was sexually abused by Tanarus, who took advantage of his status as older brother figure. I've split it into a two-shot, with a segment before Thor returns and a segment after Thor returns. 
> 
> Warnings for child sexual abuse and pseudo-incest.

The first time Tanarus kissed him, Loki didn’t know what to do. 

He’d been on his way out of Asgardia, walking down a dark, infrequently travelled corridor in order to avoid undue attention, when Tanarus found him and struck up a conversation. Rather unexpected, because as far as Loki knew Tanarus never travelled this path and anyway was usually otherwise occupied with friends after the evening meal.

The conversation felt odd, inane and without the easy flow that Loki remembered their conversations usually having… and then all of a sudden, without any provocation that Loki could see, Tanarus pressed him against the wall and kissed him.

Loki went very still, eyes quite wide. It was not, on the whole, a very pleasant kiss – he had no experience in the area, but it seemed entirely too sloppy and wet. Tanarus’s tongue forced his mouth open, big and clumsy, and Loki was made unpleasantly aware of the scent of his breath.

It occurred to him that he should probably react in some way. Tanarus pulled back a moment, possibly for air, and before he could surge back in Loki turned his face away.

“Um. Might I ask what you’re doing? Brother – ?”

Tanarus’s huge, callused hand had gripped his chin and turned it back toward him.

“I forgot,” he said, his eyes on Loki’s mouth. “You don’t remember, do you? We used to do this quite often, before.”

_Before._

_Before I died,_ thought Loki. _Before I went evil?_

“Ah,” was what he said. _And why have you chosen to tell me of this only now?_ he would have added, but Tanarus was kissing him again and it seemed altogether much easier to just let him go on without more interruption.

They spent a little while like that, tucked up against the wall in that abandoned corridor. Tanarus’s hands migrated down to Loki’s waist, and eventually Loki was lifted so that Tanarus no longer had to kneel down to him and could press his knee between Loki’s legs.

It was profoundly uncomfortable. Loki did his best to keep up with those sloppy, wide-mouthed kisses, and to not be too bothered by being pressed into the hard rock of the wall, but he was very relieved when Tanarus finally stopped. 

“Ah, Loki,” Tanarus said with a smile as Loki stumbled to his feet after having been let go. “You are just as well as I remembered.”

“I think that’s the first positive comment I’ve ever heard regarding my past,” Loki said. “But brother, why didn’t you…?” _tell me before,_ he meant to say, but Tanarus was already turning away. “I’ll see you around,” he said after him instead, and Tanarus vaguely acknowledged him with a dip of the head.

Loki continued on his way down toward Leah’s cave, wiping his face and straightening his clothes, thinking on how strange that whole experience had been.

It was to be repeated.

In the next few weeks, Tanarus found and cornered him several times to ‘make out’ with him, as the humans termed it. Loki did not particularly enjoy the encounters, but Tanarus seemed to have been missing that sort of intimacy and anyway it wasn’t as though they were painful. And besides, it meant his brother was spending far more time with him than he usually did. 

For that reason alone Loki was willing to put up with it. He even, guiltily, agreed to stay longer and miss out on seeing Leah sometimes – well, it wasn’t as though she was expecting him or said she cared whether he showed up or not.

It was just that when he stayed longer with Tanarus… at first it was just the knee between his legs, pressing uncomfortably against his crotch. Then it was Tanarus’s hands, taking his own and pressing them to Tanarus’s clothed erection – and really, that was a bit frightening. A little thrilling, too, if only because it seemed it ought to be forbidden. 

Loki was aware of a certain amount of taboo associated with incest, at least among Midgardians, but he’d also seen movies and such where incest was avoided by one of the characters really being adopted, or something like that – which, well. He wasn’t really sure what Asgardians thought of it, but it wasn’t like he was about to ask about it. 

And anyway, riskily forbidden as it may feel, he found that even when Tanarus encouraged Loki to touch him skin-to-skin – even when he had Loki kneel down and fit his penis into his mouth, it didn’t do anything to Loki. He was aware of things of this nature – he’d seen his fair share of porn, after all (viewed primarily for academic purposes) – and, well, even teenage reincarnated evil gods were teenagers with occasional urges. But there was no spark in this, nothing that made him particularly interested. In fact, most of the time he felt repulsed. It was a chore, the reward for which was some extra awkward, boring conversation with his brother.

That was the thing that really confused Loki – things had flowed so easily between them before, and now they struggled for words. Or Tanarus did. Perhaps it was simply due to the stress of that whole Serpent debacle? 

Loki put that question to Leah once while on one of their increasingly less frequent visits. 

She poked the fire as she answered him. “I suppose it’s possible. Dying can really take the life out of a person.”

He looked at her, confused. “Dying? Are we speaking of the same thing? Tanarus fought the Serpent and won. He didn’t die.”

She glanced up at him, a frown marring her face. “But of course he did. That was the prophecy, remember? Nine steps, and then he died.” But even as she spoke a confused expression came over her face and she frowned all the more fiercely and looked back to the fire.

Prophecy? Oh, yes, the prophecy he’d fought so hard to bring true. The fall of the Serpent… and of… Tanarus. But Tanarus hadn’t died.

As Loki made his way up toward his tower that night he tried to think back to those events. They hadn’t been so very long ago, so why did things seem so fuzzy? 

He asked Ikol about it as they made their way back up to Asgardia, but the bird was unhelpful. Not particularly surprising, considering who he was, but Loki found it very infuriating of him to show up for the first time in weeks and refuse to give him any advice. Ikol’s only response was to shrug his shoulders and fly off as they neared the main buildings of Asgardia. 

Loki was so lost in thought as he made his way toward his tower that he didn’t notice Tanarus until he’d gripped his wrist. He nearly shouted in surprise, but calmed when he realized who it was.

“Brother! You scared me.” He looked up at Tanarus with a smile as he spoke, and then it faded. Tanarus’s face was quite angry.

“Where were you?” he demanded. “Where did you go? With whom did you speak?”

“No one – I was just exploring – brother, that hurts.”

Tanarus’s great, strong hands were squeezing his wrists. Loki looked down at them rather than up at Tanarus when he spoke. Although lies came easily to him, he didn’t enjoy lying to his brother – but Leah was not to be known by the Asgardians, it would only complicate things too much.

“I looked for you,” Tanarus told him, pressing him against the wall as he often did. His face was drawn into a fierce scowl. “I looked for you, and you were nowhere to be found!”

Loki stared up at him, terrified – often he forgot how huge and strong his brother was, but if Tanarus wanted to break him Loki had no doubts that he could.

Instead, Tanarus leaned in to catch him up in a great, slobbery kiss, and Loki could have sighed in relief. Yes, surely with this he would forgive him.

Tanarus’s hands wandered, cupping him through the thinness of his leggings, and Loki shifted uncomfortably. This was new.

Then those hands were finding Loki’s waistband, slipping between fabric and skin and _touching_ him and –

Now things were really uncomfortable. Tanarus’s mouth moved away from Loki’s, to his jaw and his ear, and Loki was squirming, trying to move away from his touch. He could let his brother kiss him and touch him in return if that was what Tanarus wanted, but this – being touched himself, having Tanarus’s great, hot hand fold over him and stroke him into arousal – this, of everything else he’d done with Tanarus, felt truly incestuous – beyond tantalizingly forbidden and straight into very, very unwanted.

For the first time, Loki considered asking Tanarus to stop.

“Brother,” he gasped, turning his head as Tanarus placed kisses to the space below his earlobe. “Tanarus. Please.”

Tanarus chuckled. “I knew I could make you beg for it.”

He wasn’t understanding at all.

“I don’t like this,” Loki said finally, bluntly. “Could we stop?”

And Tanarus did stop. He took his hands from Loki’s completely unwanted erection and stood back, staring at him.

“You want to stop,” he repeated, and Loki nodded. His heart was pounding in his ears – he felt flushed and afraid, aroused and severely uncomfortable, all at once.

“Ah,” he said, “I mean. We used to have plenty of fun together without all this. Didn’t we? I would like…” _to go back to that,_ he wanted to say, but the look on Tanarus’s face made him trail off into silence.

“Is your mind of poor quality?” demanded Tanarus. “Fun? Loki, have I humoured you too much in letting you prattle on and on about boring and insignificant things? That is not fun, little brother. That is a chore.”

Loki stared up at him, utterly surprised. Was this a recent thing? Had Tanarus always been bored by everything he spoke of? But no – surely that couldn’t be the case – he remembered _talking_ with him, the easy back and forth banter of it. 

Tanarus moved in again, raising his chin with one large hand. “Loki, little Loki. All the Nine Realms rejoiced to hear you had fallen. All but I, your brother. My memories of loving you drove me to bring about your return. Do not deny me the love I so sorely missed!”

And when Loki said nothing to that – what could he say? – Tanarus kissed him again, and pressed him against the wall once more. His great hands slipped into Loki’s leggings and Loki shut his eyes and couldn’t stop himself from squirming but did not ask Tanarus to stop and did not try to break free, even as the sickening heat rose.

Afterward, Tanarus wiped his hand on Loki’s clothes and had him suck him off. Then they stood together a few moments, the silence awkward and uncomfortable. Loki didn’t want to break it, mindful of Tanarus’s complaints about his boring prattle, and soon they parted to go their separate ways.

In his tower room Loki found Ikol, and once more asked his thoughts. But again it was useless, for Ikol only said, “My brother has always been insensitive,” and refused to elaborate on anything.

After that, Loki barely spoke at all during their encounters. That seemed to be what Tanarus wanted – he barely seemed to notice anything of Loki beyond those trysts, in any event. Loki took to haunting Leah’s cave again, spending more time out of Asgardia than in it. Yet he could not bring himself to outright avoid _Tanarus_ \- after all, what he’d said was true. His brother had brought him back from the dead. It would truly be selfish of him to deny him whatever form of affection he craved in return.

For that reason, when one night Tanarus gripped him by the shoulder and told him to come to his room, Loki went.

He caught a glimpse of Ikol as he approached the doorway, a black and white flutter of wings headed in the opposite direction. Dread coiled in his belly, but he swallowed it down and walked through with his head held high.

It wasn’t so bad at first. Kisses and touches, nothing he hadn’t already experienced. Even as Tanarus unclothed him, it wasn’t so bad. He had Loki suck his dick once he was naked, hitching his sleep-shirt up to grant him access, and for a moment Loki almost hoped that this would be it.

But Tanarus made him pull off before he came, and told him to lie face down, and then Loki was afraid.

The first finger… was not so bad. Uncomfortably intrusive, but bearable. The second, though, made him gasp sharply with pain. Too big. Tanarus’s hands and fingers, his everything, were far too big. Loki knew how this was supposed to go – did Tanarus really think he could fit?

As painful as the fingers were, it was worse when he withdrew them, for Loki knew what was coming next. At the first press of Tanarus’s manhood he squirmed in his grip, suddenly desperate to escape.

“Easy, now,” came Tanarus’s rumble. It was supposed to be comforting, he supposed, but it was all _wrong_ , and as he pressed inside Loki cringed and squirmed and at last gasped out – “Please, please don’t, it hurts.”

“Loki,” Tanarus said, his voice sounding very strained and a bit frustrated. “Why must you make everything so difficult? I’ve told you already, it was for this reason alone you were brought back.”

The words, when they penetrated Loki’s ears, were like another sharp blow equal to the physical pain. But even as he heard and comprehended them, he couldn’t stop himself from speaking, pleading, hoping that Tanarus would care enough to listen. “It hurts, it hurts, you’re too big. Please don’t, please stop.”

How pathetic he sounded – how pathetic he felt. Loki Silvertongue, reduced to ineffective begging. And it was quite ineffective – Tanarus seemed to take the comment on his size as a compliment, and only strained inward all the more, ignoring all of Loki’s protests.

Loki’s only consolation, in the end, was that Tanarus was so intent on his own pleasure that he did not try to give Loki any. Even as Loki’s begging tapered off into quiet, hissing gasps, he was grateful that the pain was without relief, without any of the sickening arousal Tanarus so often made him feel.

And when it was over, and Tanarus lay sated and sleeping beside him on the bed, Loki stared at the ceiling and heard his words again and again, throbbing in time to the physical pain inside of him. _”It was for this reason alone you were brought back.”_

He was surprised by how much he hurt even afterwards, once he’d clothed himself and left the room. Asgardian bodies – well, half-giant bodies – were very hardy, he knew, but it felt like something had torn inside. And he thought he had seen some blood on the sheets… he considered for a few, very brief moments searching out a healer. But he could not bear the thought of going to someone in Asgardia and asking them about any injuries brought on by rough anal sex, so instead he grit his teeth against the pain and made his limping way down to Broxton. 

There was no Wi-fi in Asgardia, after all.

He loitered outside a café and pulled up the internet on his Starkphone. A few carefully worded searches led him to the conclusion that whatever it was it was nothing terribly dangerous or life-threatening. Not for an Asgardian, at least. He would just have to hope his body would heal quickly, so that he could stop his ridiculously obvious limping.

He sat there for a while, awkward and in pain, unwilling to return to Asgardia. He could go to Leah, he supposed, but he couldn’t quite muster the will to force himself to stand upright again and make his way to her cave. Besides, she would probably ask questions, and even if he deflected them well enough she’d look at him funny and it would just make everything weird and strange. Weirder and stranger.

On a whim, he put in another query on his search engine. It would probably bring up nothing of use, but it was at least something to pass the time, and there was really no one else he could bring himself to ask. _How can I make my older brother stop touching me?_

The results he got back were not quite what he was expecting. Abuse crisis lines? Help for molestation victims? Rape victim crisis lines?

He read on and on, brows furrowing. Gods were gods, and Midgardians were Midgardians, and they were not the same so their rules could not be the same. But the more he read, the more difficult he found it to commit to that distinction.

These Midgardians said that what Tanarus was doing to him was wrong. That it was cruel. That Loki _didn’t deserve it._

He was Loki, God of Lies, and he knew well that it would take months, maybe years before he could earn his way into no longer deserving the Asgardians’ hatred. And he owed Tanarus everything – nothing that he asked of Loki could be wrong or cruel, not when Tanarus loved him so very much.

But according to the humans… he didn’t owe Tanarus _this_. And that Tanarus asked this – demanded this – of him meant that he didn’t love him at all. It meant Tanarus was a monster, cruel and selfish and everything Loki knew he wasn’t, because Tanarus was a hero – everyone knew that! 

… wasn’t he? That was Tanarus that was the beloved, kind hero. Wasn’t it?

The hero who died after slaying the Serpent and walking nine steps…

Loki closed his eyes against the tiny glare of the computer screen, trying to remember. Everything directly following the Serpent’s fall seemed so fuzzy, and before that… Tanarus was so different now compared to how he had been before. Loki remembered his brother’s low rumble of a laugh, his safe, warm presence. Not so safe anymore.

Tanarus was brutish and cruel and selfish, caring nothing for Loki beyond the physical pleasure that he could give him. Tanarus had… Tanarus had raped him.

Loki’s kind, beloved brother would never do such a thing.

So Tanarus could not be his brother.

There was a flutter of wings as Ikol settled on Loki’s shoulder, and Loki shut the Starkphone screen off before he could read the tiny words on it. He didn’t want to hear Ikol’s condescending comments about asking Midgardians for help and believing their advice.

“Ikol,” he said, looking out into the dark of the night. “I think I’ve just realized something very important.”

“Clever you,” said the bird.


	2. 2

Afterwards, once Karnilla’s scheme was revealed and Tanarus – really Ulik – was destroyed, Thor was back and everything was as it should be. 

And yet, when after the evening meal Thor grabbed Loki’s shoulder and drew him away to talk, brother to brother, Loki found he was afraid. It was stupid, of course. This was _Thor_ , Loki’s true big, golden, heroic brother. He’d never do those things.

They talked together, falling into each other’s rhythm as easily as always. How Loki had missed this, the simple back and forth of their banter. Then Thor’s face grew serious and he took Loki’s shoulders in his hands and spoke. “Speak truly, now, have things been well for you in my absence?”

Loki looked at him in surprise, a sudden dread sparking in his belly. Could Thor know…? “Really, brother, you ought to know better than to ask me to speak the truth.”

Thor smiled a little, but it was only brief. He kneeled down towards Loki, who drew back a little – of course he wasn’t going to kiss him, this was Thor, he had no interest in doing that with Loki – and said quite seriously. “Things were hard for you even when I was here. My friends swore an oath to protect you, and this I believe they would have kept were I merely gone. But I do not know whether Ulik held them to that same oath, and before I ask them I would like to hear from your lips what occurred.”

Oh. He meant only the way everyone else in Asgardia treated Loki. “I was quite alright, Thor. Tanarus – Ulik may have been a fool, but he did not ask the Lady Sif or the valiant Warriors Three to ignore their oath and leave me to the tender mercies of my peers.”

This, at least, was true.

Thor looked at him very closely before he stood. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said, and took his leave.

Loki looked after him, a curious lump in his throat. Once before, Thor had said that he did not trust Loki. Yet still he went to ask him first whether or not his friends had kept their oath to protect him, even though he must have known that if Loki wished he could have spread all sorts of discord by lying. Perhaps Thor wouldn’t have believed him if he’d said they had mistreated him – perhaps this was only a test – but even so, Loki could not help feeling tremendously grateful and tremendously shamed. How could he ever have thought Tanarus was his brother, when his real brother was so considerate toward him?

That night, he went to visit Leah and tell her all about how Thor had returned to them. She claimed she didn’t actually care to hear anything he said, but when they both realized how late it was she also told him not to bother returning to Asgardia that night. He hesitated – he usually had nightmares, and even if they tended to be not _quite_ so bad as those that were visited upon him by the fear stuff that the Serpent had left behind, they were still not exactly insignificant. But that was only usually, and it was so very rare that Leah was this hospitable, and anyway she was Leah – it wasn’t like she was going to tell someone about them.

So Loki found himself curling up against the cave wall, the hard ground only slightly less comfortable than his straw pallet, as he drifted into sleep.

Luck was against him. Tonight his dreams were different from usual – instead of the screams of his victims from former lives, he dreamed of Tanarus. Or, rather, Ulik. He dreamed of his hideously huge hands, his stinking, warm body, the way he had touched him. The way he had refused to stop, even as Loki begged him – 

There was a sharp pain in his leg as Thori bit at him, and he woke to find Leah standing over him, frowning.

“Sorry, sorry!” he yelped, sitting upright and batting at Thori, who growled something about his murderous intentions and backed off. “… although I suppose I needn’t apologize, since it isn’t as though you were sleeping.” Even as he muttered this, and ducked his head to avoid the slap he knew was coming, an image from the dream he’d just had pushed itself to the front of his mind, and he felt suddenly, hideously sick. He had to reach out a hand for balance against the cave wall as he retched.

“You _will_ clean up anything you bring up,” Leah told him, but she laid a quick, cool hand against his forehead as he fought to hold down his dinner. The urge to vomit passed fairly quickly, and he sat back again, laying his head against the cool stone of the cave wall. 

Leah was giving him a puzzled look. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Hm?” he said, looking over at her. “Oh, nothing. Nothing more than usual. Though you know me, there’s quite a bit wrong with me on a regular basis.”

He gave her a grin and she settled back, her frown easing into a far more neutral expression. She didn’t look convinced, but apparently she didn’t think it was worth the trouble of pressing him about it. Instead, she turned pointedly to poke at the low fire, allowing him privacy as he rearranged himself into a more comfortable position and tried to go to sleep again.

The next day, a hand grabbed Loki by the shoulder as he made his way back into Asgard. He looked up, terrified, as Thor said with a thunderous voice, “Where have you been hiding?”

He must have seen the terror on Loki’s face, for he immediately loosened his grip and gentled his expression. “Easy, little brother. I only wanted to know where you’d been!”

“Out,” Loki managed, shrugging. He stepped back, out from under Thor’s hand – it felt too heavy, far too much like Tanarus’s. “I snuck away early this morning. I do apologize if you’ve been searching for me!”

Thor’s face relaxed into a smile. “I only wanted to greet you good morning.”

“It’s not so late that you cannot still do so, if you wish,” Loki told him.

Thor chuckled and did so, and told him that they should meet after the evening meal to catch up with one another some more. Loki smiled and agreed, and as soon as Thor was out of sight made his way quickly to his room.

“Ikol,” he said, and the magpie came to sit upon his wrist. “What do you think? Should I go?”

“Do you truly need my counsel for this?”

Loki frowned at him. “Tell me straight and true, pet of mine. Do you believe I will be in danger if I go?”

The moment he said it he felt ashamed. What a stupid question! This was _Thor_ , his real brother. Well, adopted brother. Real in every way that counted. He would never want to do the things with Loki that Tanarus had always wanted to do.

“No,” said Ikol, and because it was exactly what he wanted to hear, Loki found himself believing him.

So that evening he went to Thor’s rooms. The door was shut when he arrived, and he had a horrible sense of déjà vu as he raised his hand to knock. 

But Ikol was still on his shoulder, not flying away, and anyway there were voices coming from within the room. Quiet voices, a man and a woman in pleasant conversation. Sif had seemed to be barely able to stand Tanarus, for all that he was supposed to be her lover in that great sham, and Tanarus had of course always arranged things so that she was never nearby when he was with Loki; to hear her speaking now with Thor, within his rooms, was somehow a great relief.

He was so distracted by the comforting sound of their dual voices, that he was still standing there, hand still half-raised to knock, when Sif opened the door.

“Ah. Hello, your ladyship,” he said, dropping his hand and nodding courteously to her. She eyed him and then nodded back, similarly courteous, before she went away down the hallway.

Loki looked after her a moment, and then Thor was ushering him into the room and closing the door behind him.

The click as it slid shut made a sudden panic rise in Loki, and he had to remind himself again that this was Thor, not Tanarus. 

They sat on the bed and Thor asked him about everything he’d not asked about during their first conversation after his return – so everything, really, that Loki had done while Thor was gone. Loki told him all sorts of stories, some even true (when asked about what books he’d studied or what magic he was learning) but most false. Thor followed along, nodding and chuckling in all the right places, but underneath his smiles and apparently genuine interest in Loki’s doings, there was a certain seriousness to him that was quite beyond his usual stolid nature.

“Loki,” he began, “Sif says that…” and Loki could already see where this was going. Because Sif had _seen_ him, once, after he’d been with Tanarus, and though she could not have known what had happened, and had not asked, her gaze was ever perceptive and penetrating.

“Tell me again how you managed to return to us,” demanded Loki, not wanting to think on that subject again. This bedchamber and all its trappings already had him on the edge of a great chasm, he felt, but so long as he could focus on Thor he was sure he could avoid falling into it.

Thor searched his face, and then nodded and launched into another retelling of his fight to return, of how he’d heard Loki’s voice and remembered his name and accomplished the impossible. Loki watched him with an adoring face, and every time Thor seemed to be slowing down and thinking of breaching the subject of whatever Sif had told him, Loki prompted him to recall another detail, describe another moment. 

By the time he allowed Thor to be finished it was late, and when Thor again seemed about to question him Loki was able to produce a completely authentic yawn. 

He looked back up at Thor a bit sheepishly. “Oh, dear, I’ve stayed quite late. I should really be heading back to my room…”

“Why not stay?” said Thor. “We can talk long into the night, if you want. My bed is surely big enough for you as well as me.” 

And Loki felt suddenly, terribly afraid.

“Stay?” he repeated. “Why should I – you want me to sleep in your _bed_?”

His voice was rising, high and shrill and pathetic, and he was moving away from Thor, who looked very alarmed.

“I thought it would be easier,” he said. “But if you don’t want to, that’s perfectly alright… Loki, what’s the matter?”

For Loki was shivering, not cold but desperately afraid. Over Thor’s shoulder, he glimpsed Ikol fluttering to another perch, turning his head this way and that to stare at him. Somehow, that managed to calm him.

“Oh – nothing, nothing, it’s just that I haven’t brought any of my sleep clothes,” he said, folding his arms over his chest and smiling brightly up at his brother. Silly, if Thor asked him to spend the night in his bed he meant nothing by it. 

Thor offered him one of his shirts. He left the room entirely while Loki changed, which did quite a bit to comfort him.

They ended up not talking much at all, only lying together, listening to the rhythm of each other’s breathing as they drifted slowly into sleep. Just being in the bed – the same bed in which Tanarus had – the same bed, just _being_ in it, lying beneath the covers, made him feel slightly ill. But for all that Tanarus had demanded such horribly intimate touches of him, he’d never seemed to be interested in just holding him, and somehow, somehow, having Thor’s warm arm around him and his warm chest at his back, was infinitely comforting. 

But in his dreams, Tanarus was there again. Holding him, imprisoning him with huge, strong hands. Touching him with those hands, _hurting_ him – pushing him down to make him – 

He woke to the feeling of large hands holding him down as he thrashed and moaned, caught in the nightmare memory. Gradually, he realized that it wasn’t Tanarus that was holding him down, it was Thor – and all he could think, suddenly, was that Thor wanted to do all the same things to him that Tanarus had. 

He fought wildly, shouting, “No, no,” but Thor only held him, looming over him huge and terrible and gradually the fight went out of him. He shivered, acutely aware of how totally weak he was before Thor. He could only shut his eyes, feeling tears running down the sides of his face, and beg, “Please, please don’t.”

“Don’t what?” said Thor, relaxing his hold, and Loki realized that he’d been speaking before while Loki fought him, trying to soothe him. 

He gulped and opened his eyes again. Thor was gazing down at Loki with desperate concern, with no hint of lust or a threat whatsoever. Over Thor’s shoulder he saw Ikol glaring at him, and felt terribly foolish. Of course Thor didn’t want to do anything like what Tanarus had.

“Oh,” he said. Thor was sitting back, no longer pinning him to the bed, and he raised one hand to wipe at his face. “Nothing. Just a nightmare.” 

He turned his face to the side – and had a sudden, vivid memory of turning his face, tear-stained, in just the same way against the sheets of this same bed after Tanarus had raped him – 

He gagged, and sat up quickly, leaning over the side of the bed so that the vomit, when it came, splashed onto the floor instead of all over Thor’s covers.

Thor sat beside him, rubbing his back, and though his gorge rose twice again he managed to swallow it back down. He sat back on the bed after, and pulled his legs up so that he could curl his arms around them. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, not wanting to look at Thor. “For the mess and the disturbance, both.”

“Loki.”

The tone of Thor’s voice compelled Loki to meet his gaze – and it was thunderous with anger. Not directed at him, he knew. He thought. That made it easier to respond to.

“Thor,” he returned, tired. And then he lifted his head from his knees and asked quite clearly, “Why did you bring me back?”

It threw Thor off-balance, he could tell. “What do you mean?”

“I was a wicked, wicked person, Thor. Why would you want to bring me back into your life? How could you have loved Loki enough to want him running around, causing chaos and destruction again? Was it just because you wanted – did you just want me as your pet, a helpless whore for you to rut with and fondle whenever you wanted?”

The anger on Thor’s face gave way to horrified shock, and then just as quickly was back in full force.

“ _Never,_ ” he said, vehement. “Loki, you are my brother, no matter what terrible deeds your past self may have committed – I _know_ that they are not all you ever were, nor all that you ever can be. I brought you back out of love, not some crude and base desire to – who told you this disgusting thing? Was it that scum, Ulik? Did he…?” 

There he trailed off, perhaps realizing it unnecessary to ask or perhaps only wishing to not have to outright say it. Loki buried his face in his knees again, and then shrugged, as he’d seen humans do. As unnecessary as the question was, it seemed even more unnecessary to answer it when they both very well understood.

He jumped a little as Thor laid a hand on his head. “Oh, Loki, I am so sorry.”

He ruffled his hair, as only Thor ever did, and Loki swallowed a sob so that he could say, as lightly as possible, “Well, really Thor, it’s not like it was _your_ fault. You were so terribly inconvenienced by that whole Serpent debacle, and being dead and all.”

And Loki had been very deeply involved in all of that – really, when he thought about it, it was his own fault Tanarus had been in Asgardia to start with, since he had been indirectly responsible for Thor’s death in the first place. Not that he ever, ever wanted to tell Thor that, and oh, he was certain it made him terribly selfish that he never wanted Thor’s gaze to fall upon him with anything other than the love and tenderness in it now.

“I would have struck his deathblow less quickly, had I known of what he’d done,” said Thor, and the anger in his voice made Loki feel terribly, vindictively happy. “That I may have taken my time, and made him truly pay for his crimes.”

Thor’s hands slid under Loki as he spoke, so that soon he was sitting on the bed with Loki cradled in his lap.

“Is it bad of me,” said Loki, blinking up at him from the dozy comfort of his arms, “That I wish much the same thing?”

There was the slightest bit of tension in Thor’s arms, for just a moment, and then they relaxed again. “Nay. Not when he did you such grievous harm.”

He was rocking Loki slowly, and Loki considered making a comment about that. _“Do you think yourself a mother, and I your babe, Thor, to be rocked slowly into sleep? How about a cradle song? I understand the humans have a quite horrible one about a branch falling on the child…”_

But this was so very comfortable, and in any case it seemed pointless to try to pretend he didn’t appreciate it. So instead he laid his head on Thor’s arm and shut his eyes again, content simply to be held.

He was already slipping back into sleep when he heard Thor speak again, this time in a whisper against his hair. “I will not leave you to such a fate ever again.”

It wasn’t a promise that he could ever hope to really keep, of course, but Loki didn’t call him out on it. After all, it wasn’t as though he was in any place to criticize.


End file.
